Season 2, episode 9
Run Away, Little Boy
Lorelai gets an ice cream maker for a wedding gift. She and Sookie and Rory debate the ethics of keeping it, seeing as it has no return address, but the wedding isn't happening. Rory and Paris end up doing Romeo and Juliet together with Madeline, Lousie, and Tristan. Brad is there, too.
Tropes
- Adapted Out: The ending of Romeo & Juliet where Juliet wakes to find Romeo dead, kills herself and is later found by their parents is cut from the school play.
- Bait-and-Switch: Tristan teases Rory with suggesting telling her boyfriend about their "history" by referencing the "first kiss" while Dean is in the room, then turning it into their characters' first kiss in the first act, which is performed by a different group from their class.
- Call-Back: Tristan suggests making their stage kiss special by having Rory cry, which is what she did when they kissed at a party after she and Dean broke up.
- Comically Missing the Point: Lorelai thinks "Musso Lusini" sounds too much like "Mussolini."
- Continuity Nod:
- Lane mentions that she took biology last year.
- Louise thinks Paris is still mad at Tristan for taking her out on one date then dumping her.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Lorelai jokes that Dean learning that Rory and Tristan, who are cast as Romeo and Juliet, kissed while he and Rory were broken up would cause him to murder Tristan during the death scene. Dean himself jokes about strangling Tristan with an apron, but finds him annoying in his own right. It doesn't seem to occur to him that Tristan is actually interested in Rory.
- Dramatic Irony: Tristan and Rory kissed in a previous episode. Tristan and Rory get cast as Romeo and Juliet in the same play, in act five where their most talked about kiss (in the play and out) happens.
- Oblivious to Love: Lorelai refuses to take the hint of Luke building her a chuppah, but when she dates a guy ten years her junior rather than Luke she thinks it's weird that Luke is annoyed.
- Sarcasm Mode: The sight of Rory chatting with a member of a "rival group" from their Shakespeare class puts Paris in this, even though they're doing different acts of the same play.
- Shout-Out:
- Lorelai rents The Shining and Bringing Up Baby.
- Emily Post and Martha Stewart provide moral guidance for what to do with late wedding presents.
- William Shakespeare didn't intend for his plays to be studied in classrooms by people who don't particularly care about the fate of Macbeth, so it makes sense to have Rory's English class perform Romeo and Juliet.
- Lorelai's relative proves he didn't send her an expensive wedding gift by quoting The Bible at her and slut-shaming her for having a child out of wedlock.
- The guy Lorelai meets in night class watches The Twilight Zone (1959).
- Louise quotes The Mourning Bride by William Congreve.
- Michel refuses to swear on Destiny's Child.
- Lane showed her mother William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet.
- Dean is very disappointed with U2 touring with No Doubt.
- Lorelai's date hasn't seen Absolutely Fabulous. He wants life to be like the Meryl Streep movie where she rafts with Kevin Bacon.
- Louise, as friar Laurence, plays him like the priest in a Madonna video.
- Lorelai wants to buy The Powerpuff Girls shotglasses.
- Luke thinks it's too bad Doogie Howser, M.D. doesn't exist.
- Lorelai is annoyed with being considered a female Jerry Lee Lewis.
- Show Within a Show: The Romeo and Juliet school play.
- Something Something Leonard Bernstein: All Sookie remembers from Romeo and Juliet is "Romeo, Romeo, blahblah blah blah…"
- Stealth Insult: Act two is framed as a caveman story, and Lorelai suggests getting Luke to translate their grunting.
- Take That!: Lorelai thinks Romeo and Juliet is boooring.
- The Perfectionist: Mrs. Kim thinks Lane should take every subject every year to learn all there is to know about everything.
- Younger Than They Look: Lorelai insists that her date Paul looked older in a suit.
